WE ARE constantly being told that AI could be one of humanity鈥檚 most useful inventions. It is identifying new ways to fight climate change and helping develop fusion technology (see 鈥淭he biggest scientific challenges that AI is already helping to crack鈥�). In the future, we may find it teaching our kids, cutting our workload and providing us all with a super-smart, computerised personal assistant (see 鈥淲hat generative AI really means for the economy, jobs and education鈥�). But how can you use AI to improve your life today?
You have probably been benefiting from AI already without realising. From ride-share apps like Uber to personal assistants like Alexa, many products have been using AI for years. But with the new availability of generative AIs 鈥� which produce text, video, images, and other content in response to prompts 鈥� there are even more ways you can use this tech to make your life easier. 鈥淭here鈥檚 great potential for regular, everyday people to be able to use it,鈥� says , CEO of Infinite Retina, a generative AI research consultancy.
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One way of welcoming AI into your world is to look at how businesses are using it to become more productive and adapt it to your own needs. Got a tricky email to write to your landlord and don鈥檛 know where to start? Ask generative AI. They are ideal for 鈥渇actual things that need to be said concisely and without emotion,鈥� says Christina Philippe, a senior digital strategist at Ogilvy in Germany. She has been outsourcing such tasks to ChatGPT, giving a list of the issues and her desired remedies. She has found that it crafts emails that need minimal tweaking. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a really quick fix,鈥� says Cronin.
Make sure you double-check anything your chosen AI produces, however. , in which the maths behind the AI can generate nonsense text, claims that aren鈥檛 true or facts that are just plain wrong. And don鈥檛 be fooled by eloquent copy 鈥� one study found that the most fluent-sounding scripts produced by AI are the most likely to contain inaccuracies.
As we start to live side by side with generative AI, it is helpful to be able to easily distinguish it from humans, say if you are attempting to get help via online chat on a consumer website. A simple capital letter trick should help. If I were to ask you 鈥榠sBABY grassCARPET greenDRY orFROG blueSALT?鈥� you would probably be able to give the correct answer: green. In a similar test, 100 per cent of people got the answer right, whereas five large language models (LLMs) 鈥� deep-learning tools that understand and generates text in a human-like fashion 鈥� all failed, including OpenAI鈥檚 GPT-3 and ChatGPT and Meta鈥檚 LLaMA. Of course, future AIs may be able to distinguish patterns as easily as we do, but this works for now.
Dinner party wizard
Beyond outsourcing the tasks you dread, AI can also help you streamline your media consumption. You can use ChatGPT to summarise long podcasts or YouTube videos, say, saving you precious time. The paid version, called ChatGPT Plus, has the ability to add third-party plug-ins, some of which can scan automatically generated transcriptions of content and summarise it 鈥� though, as before, you should always check the summaries are factually correct before lunging into a dinner party conversation.
Speaking of dinner parties, you might want to follow example. The San Francisco-based tech CEO at HR company Exec chose to host a dinner party in January in which the menu was entirely crafted by AI. He asked ChatGPT to produce a fusion meal combining Mediterranean and Indian cuisine. It created a list of ingredients, recipes and cooking instructions. There were some hiccups 鈥� the chatbot asked Linehan to create chaat masala by adding a range of spices to pre-existing chaat masala 鈥� but the experiment was largely successful, he says.
Generative AI can also help when you need to scramble together a meal from odds and ends at the end of a long day. 鈥淐hatGPT is best for this,鈥� says journalist . 鈥淚t seems to channel the spirit of a late-middle aged North American home cook.鈥� It鈥檚 fun, she says, 鈥渁lthough in one low moment, it advised me to 鈥榞arnish鈥� something with roast potatoes鈥�.
If you need to work off those meals, AI can help there too 鈥� AI-powered fitness apps are burgeoning, replacing personal trainers by taking charge of your exercise routine at a fraction of the cost. The popular Freeletics, for instance, compares your fitness data to other people鈥檚 to provide you with a personalised training plan.
AI can provide personalised education plans to help your kids, if you have them, too. 鈥淔or the first time in history we are close to being able to provide affordable, personalised tutoring to everyone,鈥� says at advocacy group Partnership on AI. Earlier this year, online learning platform released an AI-powered tutoring bot called Khanmigo that can generate quizzes, collaborate on writing assignments and debate topics with students.
If all that still sounds like work, take a much needed break 鈥� planned, of course, by AI. More than 45 AI services have sprung up and help locating that perfect dog-friendly, five-star hotel with views of the ocean.
Of course, above all, the tips need to be used judiciously: generative AI remains in its early stages and there is plenty of scope for mishaps. If used carefully, however, it can be a handy timesaver. Unless, of course, you want to ask it to generate and . Don鈥檛 judge: plenty of people have done that, too.
This story is part of a series in which we explore the most pressing questions about artificial intelligence. Read the other articles below
How does ChatGPT work and do AI-powered chatbots 鈥渢hink鈥� like us? | What generative AI really means for the economy, jobs and education 触听Forget human extinction 鈥� these are the real risks posed by AI today 触听Can AI ever become conscious and how would we know if that happens? 触听The biggest scientific challenges that AI is already helping to crack
